Waste management systems are well known in the art. Collection vehicles may follow planned routes when collecting refuse from bins which are assigned to users or follow ad-hoc routes. It is known to charge per collection and also to charge per weight of refuse collected. If the latter arrangement is used, a weighing mechanism is provided on each collection vehicle for weighing the bins for determining the amount of refuse collected from each user. A billing system charges the user based on the weight of the refuse collected.
Bins are typically located along the side of the streets for facilitating collection by the collection vehicles. As a consequence it is difficult to know to whom the bins are registered. The waste collection company needs to know the user of each bin in order to charge the correct user for the amount of refuse collected. Incorporating electronic transponders, for example, RFID tags on each bin which store the identity of its registered user is known in the art. Computing devices are provided on the collection vehicles which are operable to read the RFID tags for identifying the users during refuse collection. However while this provides an accurate association of the actual bin with the appropriate owner or user the incorporating and maintaining of RFID tags on each bin is a costly and labour intensive process and as a consequence occupies a significant amount of resources of the waste collection company. This is even more disadvantageous in circumstances where such association of bins with users is being retrospectively applied, for example, in circumstances where refuse collection previously did not incur charges and as a result there was no necessity to associate an individual user with their specific refuse bin. In such circumstances each of the users on a route will have their own refuse bins but heretofore in order to implement a new charge based refuse collection system it has been necessary to replace each of the previously provided bins with new bins incorporating the necessary communication devices within the bins. Alternatively communication devices may be retrofitted on the bins.
Therefore there is a need for a waste management system which is operable for associating a plurality of refuse bins to corresponding users during refuse collection therefrom without the need to employ a smart electronics device (eg. RFID tag) on each bin.